Hope completes clients' move from institution to group homes

Josh Hibbler appears to be happier and less aggressive toward others since the mostly nonverbal 18-year-old with autism moved into a group home on Springfield’s south side more than a month ago.

“I’ve noticed a big change,” his mother, Michelle Goode, 42, a resident of the St. Clair County village of Shiloh, said last week. “I’ve never seen him smiling so much.”

Hibbler, who moved from his family’s home four years ago to the Springfield campus of Hope, 15 E. Hazel Dell Lane, was among the last children and young adults to move from the campus’ residential units to one of the nonprofit’s 13 group homes in Springfield.

The transition, first announced in 2015, was required for Hope to continue receiving financial support for its residential programs from the state-federal Medicaid program, according to the chief executive officer of the organization previously known as Hope Institute for Children and Families.

The new Medicaid requirement was rooted in research that indicates home settings in residential neighborhoods, rather than institutional living, are more successful at preparing young people with developmental disabilities for independence as adults, CEO Clint Paul said.

The transition to group homes has gone smoothly, though it also resulted in Hope downsizing its residential program from 130 clients five years ago to between 72 and 78 now, Hope chief operating officer Amanda Brott said.

Current government funding rules allow Hope, which began residential services in the early 1960s, to serve clients until age 22, when they may be eligible for adult services through other not-for-profit organizations. Hope also is licensed to serve children in group homes as young as 5, but the youngest right now is 8.

“We want to push our kids to the center of the community so they can live in the community,” Brott said.

The residential program serves up to six people in each group home and is supported with more than $5 million annually from the Medicaid program, clients’ home school districts throughout Illinois and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Paul said.

When the transition to group homes first was announced, Hope officials said they no longer would be able to serve some of the most challenging individuals they had served in the past — those whose behaviors could create dangers to themselves and others.

Hope continues to operate a school and educational programs on its main campus and elsewhere, and one of the 13 group homes, the Nyre House, will remain on the campus. Hope continues to provide residential services for many young people who potentially could hurt themselves or others, Brott said.

The organization employs almost 600 people, most of them in Springfield but also through schools and other programs throughout the state. The average pay of its residential workers is $13 to $14 per hour, Brott said.

Employees who used to work in one of the residential units on the main campus now are stationed in shifts in the group homes, which are staffed 24 hours a day, officials said.

Hope has no immediate plans to open more group homes, Brott said, mainly because of a chronic shortage of qualified workers for the relatively low-paying jobs.

In the next few years, Hope would like to offer a limited, group home-based residential program specifically geared toward the needs of people with developmental disabilities who are 18 through 25 years old, Brott said.

Such a transitional program would allow Hope to provide more-focused services to prepare clients for independent living and get jobs that pay at least minimum wage or above, she said.

Many adults with intellectual disabilities in Illinois and other states work in nonprofit “day programs” or “sheltered workshops” that are allowed to pay clients below-minimum-age levels.

The problem with these programs is that they are less likely to promote gainful employment and the inclusion of disabled clients in traditional workplaces alongside non-disabled workers, Brott said.

Inclusion is good for both people with disabilities and for non-disabled employees, and employers to get to know each other better and reduce stigma, she said.

Hope wasn’t directly involved with a complaint filed recently against the city of Springfield by the U.S. Department of Justice over a Springfield zoning ordinance that federal officials say is discriminatory toward people with disabilities.

The ordinance mandates that group homes be at least 600 feet apart.

The ordinance hasn’t created problems for Hope in acquiring private homes and duplexes to convert to group homes, but Hope supports those contesting the fairness and legality of the ordinance, Brott said.

Hope has received few complaints from neighbors of Hope’s group homes, and the staff has noticed an overall decline in behavioral issues among clients in the group homes compared with behavior in the institutional setting, she said.

The on-campus living facilities were more sterile, with cinder-block walls in a location that was far from other homes. People shared bedrooms, as they do in the current group homes — all in middle-class neighborhoods — but they tended to live with more people in the on-campus units, Brott said.

“You feel differently in a homelike environment,” she said.

At the four-bedroom, ranch-style group home where Hibbler lives, he smiled when he swung on a swing in the fenced-in backyard. He said he takes part in several daily chores, including doing the laundry, cleaning dishes and making his bed.

In addition to attending school through Hope, Hibbler earns minimum wage working part-time as a custodian at Capital Area Career Center.

His mother, Goode, admissions manager for a nursing home, said she has been happy overall with Josh’s time with Hope. She said she found out about Hope through Hibbler's local school district.

He was having behavioral problems at the time and no longer could live at home, Goode said.

“His aggression was at the point where we feared for our safety,” she said. “You couldn’t sleep at night. It was terrible.”

Goode said she would like her son to be able to eventually move closer to her, his stepfather and Hibbler's three sisters and two brothers. She also would like to see him work at a job and live as independently as possible.

Hibbler's better mood in the group home makes sense to her, she said. Goode and her husband visit her son every two weeks.

Five months after state legislators finalized a fiscal 2018 budget, a Springfield-based nonprofit that provides services to children with autism still hasn’t received its funding but is restoring reduced-price and free services for low-income clients.

The Autism Program, operated by Springfield’s Hope not-for-profit organization, received written notice from the administration of Gov. Bruce Rauner two months ago that about $3.9 million in annual funding retroactive to July 1 will be sent eventually, according to Clint Paul, Hope’s chief executive officer.

Paul said last week he is hopeful that Hope can begin to receive payments from the fiscal 2018 appropriation by the end of December.

About 20 low-income families of children with autism, a developmental disability, saw therapeutic services for youngsters disrupted through a two-year state budget impasse that was resolved in early July with a full state budget passed by the legislature over Rauner’s veto.

Hope, based at 15 E. Hazel Dell Lane and formerly known as Hope Institute for Children and Families, still hasn’t received a state contract and fiscal 2018 funding, Paul said.

But the group, which stopped providing subsidized services to low-income clients in late August, started re-enrolling children in diagnostic and treatment services about a month later, and that process continues, he said.

Services haven’t been disrupted for children whose parents have private health insurance that cover services or who pay out of pocket.

About 20 families will receive subsidized treatment services for their children, and 40 to 50 will get free or reduced-price diagnostic services, through the Autism Program’s Autism Clinic in Springfield this fiscal year, Paul said.

Hope also has resumed sending money to nonprofit groups it works with to provide autism services in other parts of the state, including Chicago, Rockford, Peoria and Champaign-Urbana, he said.

Some of the Autism Program’s partner agencies reduced or stopped offering services during the impasse, affecting thousands of children around the state.

Paul said Hope never received one full year of funding for the Autism Program — normally about $4.2 million per year — because of the impasse. It appears that money will never be replaced, he said.

Hope officials now worry that ongoing budget disagreements between the Republican governor and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly could interfere with passage of an annual budget for fiscal 2019, which begins July 1, 2018, Paul said.

-- Dean Olsen

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